Ben and Me_ From Temperance to Humility - Cameron Gunn [46]
As I pulled my creation from the microwave with still over a minute to go before I had to catch the bus, I encountered yet another problem: The omelet was now too hot to eat. Panic rising in my throat, I eyed the clock and then the omelet and then the clock again. Finally, I stuffed the steaming omelet into my mouth and discovered why one should not cook an omelet in the microwave. It was the approximate temperature of the surface of the sun.
Despite the heat and the pain, I shoveled the last of the omelet down my scorched throat and noticed that it was now two minutes past the time that I normally left for my bus. I raced down the stairs, jumped into my shoes, pulled on my overcoat, grabbed my gym bag and briefcase, and rushed to the bus stop. As I turned the corner, I caught a glimpse of the back end of my bus pulling away down the street.
So there I stood with a burnt tongue, untied shoes, and a depressing certainty that I had missed my bus. So far I had been defeated in Frugality by tea bags and eggs. If I was not being frugal, I was at least exploring the basic food groups.
It struck me, as my tongue throbbed with pain, that I was enjoying Franklin’s course (notwithstanding the physical injuries). It was fun and amusing to pay so much attention to my own behavior, even when the behavior was not virtuous. Perhaps I was enjoying it too much. Just as I had let myself drift off into folly, I was reminded that Ben’s virtues, on occasion, carry a more serious tone. The death, in custody, of one of the defendants I most commonly encountered as a prosecutor forced me to consider my own feelings about his passing.
This was a man with whom I had been dealing since before my days as a prosecutor, stretching well back into my time as a barroom bouncer. He was to me, in many ways, the enemy. A career criminal, his downward spiral of drug use, violence, and illicit conduct could have led him to no end but that which he met. He was nonetheless a human being. He left, to my knowledge, a mother and a son, and surely others to mourn his passing. He was to them, I’m sure, more than the continual menace that he was to the rest of society. If I was truly following Ben’s course of virtues and adhering in the best way to his precepts, I would at the very least not take pleasure in this man’s death. Surrounded by the black humor that is so prevalent in the criminal justice world, it was difficult not to succumb to the notion that the world was a better place without this man. But I tried. I attempted to think of him as more than an inevitable statistic. Small comfort, no doubt, to his grieving mother. I resolved to remember to not always be so flippant.
On a happier note, one of my colleagues celebrated a milestone birthday. She had made it clear to me and others in the office that she wanted no recognition of this birthday. We promptly ignored that request, and our support staff prepared a cake to mark the occasion. The problem was that this coworker would have, if she had known about the existence of the cake, run screaming in the other direction.
{ Creditors have better memories than debtors.}
It fell to me to deceive her into coming into my office. I found it interesting to discover how easy it was for me to fall into a pattern of deception. I simply picked up the phone, called her office, and said, “I’ve got gossip; you need to come